Homes in Silsden and Addingham will soon enjoy higher quality tap water thanks to a £2 million investment by Yorkshire Water.

The water company is closing down two elderly treatment works and from September water will be piped to 4,000 homes in the two villages from the ultra-modern Graincliffe plant at Bingley.

Engineers will spend six months constructing an 11-kilometre underground pipeline to bring water from the £20 million state-of-the-art plant.

Silsden water treatment works, in Bolton Road, which processes water taken out of the River Wharfe, will be closed along with Addingham water treatment works in Moor Lane. Both plants date back to the late 1960s.

Work starts in March when traffic delays are expected on the A6034 Addingham to Silsden road while temporary road closures will affect Fishbeck Lane, Brunthwaite Lane and Holden Lane.

"We are abandoning the two treatment works because they are now at the end of their working lives, and customers living in Silsden and Addingham will be served from the Graincliffe water treatment works," said Lynn Holt, project manager.

"In order to transport the water from Graincliffe to the two communities, we will be laying a new pipeline, the majority of which will be housed in private land. However, when we have to go into the road carriageway we will try to keep inconvenience to a minimum."

Yorkshire Water says the project means people in Silsden and Addingham will enjoy higher quality tap water.

Water treatment at Graincliffe follows a three-stage process including two filtrations while the current process at Silsden and Addingham is more outdated - a two-stage process of clarification and a rapid gravity filter.

The disused water treatment works will become redundant but no decisions have yet been made about what would happen to the two sites, a YW spokesman said.

He added: "The water quality in Addingham and Silsden is already excellent but it will be even better after this project is completed. New regulations are coming in all the time and we want to make sure that in the future we continue to meet the standards."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.